DKFTI 49

Sibel was moved to another place by the robed people.

It was a room plastered all over with gold. The humans in robes bowed before Sibel and worshipped him.

They were under some kind of illusion.

Every time the name “Demon God” came out, his stomach lurched, but he could not bring himself to say he was not the god they were looking for.

He was afraid they might get angry about the wrong summoning and chop off his head.

‘What happened to Ron?’

The last thing he saw was them dragging Ron away.

I hope they didn’t kill him.

“Of course. They said he was a prince. They couldn’t kill him.”

Or had he taken his own life out of despair because his fiancée had died?

Sibel suddenly started feeling anxious. This place was filled only with people he did not know. He did not want the one familiar face, Ron, to disappear.

“Tsk….”

He should have learned flying magic properly.

Sibel stared at the window, lost in thought. How could he escape from here?

Even if he ran away, where could he go to reach the Demon King’s castle?

Other people could teleport in a flash. What had he been doing instead of learning that?

It was a mistake to think he could live holed up in the Demon King’s castle forever like a shut-in.

Sibel belatedly tried to find his crystal communicator, but his pocket was completely empty.

Only then did he remember tossing it carelessly on the sofa before eating snacks.

“What do I do now?”

He felt like a lost child. Helpless and scared.

“Hm.”

At times like this, he needed to think calmly. Sibel wandered around the blindingly flashy golden room, lost in thought. For now, it was impossible to solve anything alone.

He needed at least some rough information: where this place was, how he could return, how the current situation was unfolding.

“Right.”

Sibel decided to actively use his current position.

“Is anyone out there?”

So Sibel shouted toward the door. Right away the door opened and a young priest in a robe came in.

“You called, Demon God.”

The priest pressed his forehead to the floor and answered Sibel’s summons.

“Bring that person.”

“Who do you mean?”

“Ron.”

“…What?”

“The prince here, Ron.”

For now, he decided to have Ron brought to him.

***

When he met Ron again, he looked very different from before. He had been dressed in new clothes, but the wounds covering his body made one suspect that he had been subjected to violence.

“Everyone leave.”

“But, Demon God….”

“I said leave!”

“Yes….”

The priests obeyed Sibel’s words without question. That at least was fortunate.

The priests left, and only Sibel and Ron remained.

“Hey, are you okay?”

Sibel went right up to him. Ron’s body was thinner than before, and covered with wounds.

“Did they do this to you?”

At Sibel’s repeated questions, Ron’s eyes, which had been on the ground, shifted toward him. The eyes that met his were empty. They looked like the eyes of someone whose soul had left.

Were those really the eyes of a living person?

“Hey….”

The head Ron had barely lifted dropped again. His body swayed. Sibel quickly supported him.

“…She is dead after all.”

“Ah….”

“I… I made her die.”

Sibel’s chest tightened.

“No, that’s not… you did your best. You even came to the Demon King’s castle to beg….”

He did not know how to comfort him.

“Why, why did she do that. She… why…. Why did she go through it when it was bound to fail….”

Ron knew. What she had accomplished was not the summoning of the Demon God. What had been brought here was only a Demon King.

She had accomplished nothing, so why had she died?

Suddenly Sibel remembered the words that had brushed his ear before he ate snacks. She had asked for help. She had begged to save him.

‘Could that voice have been Celiana? Then who was it she was begging to save?’

It did not seem like the person she wanted saved was far away.

‘Ah. This is driving me crazy.’

Sibel hesitated, he didn’t know how to explain this. But why had Celiana summoned him instead of a real Demon God?

Wouldn’t it have been better not to summon anything at all? Did she perhaps know there was some connection between himself and Ron, and that was why she called him?

His mind grew complicated.

“How’s your health. Did you get treated? Why are you so thin?”

Ron looked like a man about to die. Was it, as Ruru had said, that he was poisoned by demonic energy and drifting between life and death?

“My life is meaningless now anyway.”

“…Why are you talking like that again.”

“She loved this country. Why, why did she make such a choice….”

Ron seemed like someone who could not hear Sibel’s words. He mumbled to himself, unable to accept the tragedy that had happened to him.

“Hey, Ron. Come to your senses.”

“I have no regrets left now.”

This was driving him insane.

Ron slowly collapsed onto the floor. Sibel looked at the fallen Ron and then lifted his head to the ceiling.

Ah, even the ceiling was disgustingly shiny.

Sibel took a deep breath and slapped Ron’s cheek.

Smack–!

The sound rang in the room.

For a moment, Sibel flinched, thinking he had hit too hard, but when Ron still did not come to his senses even after being slapped, he realized hitting hard would not be enough.

“Someone risked her life because she wanted you to live, and if you just keep whining like this, then what does that make of the dead?”

“What… do you mean?”

“I heard it. Her wish.”

“Wish…?”

“She begged me to save you.”

“What do you….”

Only then did Ron’s gaze land on Sibel. His vacant eyes seemed to have regained focus for a moment.

“For some reason I don’t know, your fiancée summoned me to save you.”

“……”

Ron’s eyes turned red. Seeing that, Sibel also felt choked up.

He was a man who had thrown away his pride and risked his life, he came all the way to the demon king’s castle to save his fiancée.

A woman who had thrown away her own life to summon a Demon King in order to save the man.

‘They’re extreme. Both of them are extreme.’

Sibel found this suffocating love unbearably painful.

“If both of you die, what meaning does it have….”

As guilty as he felt barging into this touching love story, Ron had to get his head straight, because only then could Sibel go back home.

“So get a grip. Come on.”

Ron’s eyes began to waver. Sibel crouched in front of him to meet his gaze.

“Pull yourself together and explain exactly what happened.”

He had to know what was going on in this messed-up country.

***

Ron opened his mouth only after a long time.

To sum up what he explained:

One day, heretics disguised as the Seleaum Order infiltrated the Corteirn royal palace.

They fought off the suddenly rampant monsters and, winning the people’s support, they increased their followers. That way, the heretics gained power.

With that power, they began to threaten the palace. What they demanded was the kingdom’s treasures: an ancient book and a sword infused with the blood of a Demon God.

Some were suspicious of within the palace, but by then their power had grown too great to stop.

They ensnared the king, clouded his mind, ruined the country, and threatened Prince Ron.

Ron’s fiancée Celiana could use sorcery, and the heretics told Ron that if he didn’t want her accused as a witch and killed, he had to bring back the Holy Grail.

What happened after that was what Sibel already knew. Ron brought the Holy Grail safely. But in the end Celiana died. She died after summoning Sibel, not a Demon God.

That was the extent of Ron’s story.

“Hm.”

Thinking back to the voice he had heard, Sibel could not shake the thought that maybe Celiana had deliberately summoned him.

“What about your health?”

“Thanks to the medicine I got from the Demon King’s castle, I’ve recovered to the point of being able to suppress the demonic energy.”

“Hm.”

If only the heretics had kept their promise, everyone could have been happy. Bastards.

Humans could never be trusted. Tsk.

Sibel clicked his tongue.

“So those guys were worshipping the Demon God from the start?”

“Most likely. They fooled everyone completely.”

“Hm. And the king?”

“My father is entangled in their tricks and is under mental control. He has already failed to uphold his duty as king.”

“Ah.”

What a wreck. Compared to Corteirn, the Demon King’s castle was practically a golden age.

“They seem to believe I’m the Demon God… but it feels like it’s only a matter of time before I’m found out.”

“They are cunning people. You won’t be able to deceive them.”

“Hm.”

“Please kill them.”

Ron spoke. He must have thought a Demon King could kill such humans without trouble.

Heh, that was a huge mistake.

“I want to tear them all apart and kill them. Even if I have to give up my soul.”

Why did humans always think that if they just offered their soul, their wish would be granted? Sibel didn’t know where that rumor had started, but it was something that definitely needed to be corrected.

“If things keep going like this the country will collapse, but if you die, what happens to the people?”

“……”

Of course, he understood his anger. But with the king already mad, if the prince died too, who would stabilize the kingdom?

Was he going to leave the world in the heretics’ hands like that?

“So you hang in there, and I’ll hang in there too, and….”

Let’s go back. Come on! Let me go back!